The Shadow in the Glass by JJA Harwood (any book recommendations txt) 📕

the garden. Chairs had been knocked out of place. A cupboard door stood half-open, revealing an empty bottle of cheap gin, and the tip of the coal scuttle was bent out of shape.

She rolled her eyes. It was just like Lizzie to make a mess after their confrontation, knowing that Eleanor would be the first one downstairs to clean it up. Well, she thought as she straightened the chairs, that was fine. When Lizzie saw Eleanor as a lady, she’d think twice about being so spiteful.

Eleanor put the gin bottle in the pile for Mrs Banbury; a boy would come round to collect them later for a penny or two. She set the coal scuttle back in its place and swept the soil and dust into a neat pile, obliterating the marks in the dirt with a broom. She swept the little pile into a dustpan, went out the back door and climbed the steps up to the garden, tipped the dust outside – and saw Lizzie, lying face down in the water trough.

It wasn’t the first dead body Eleanor had seen.

There’d always been a few. Mrs Pembroke, of course, lying in state like a queen. The occasional beggar frozen in the doorway of a shop, or bleeding quietly in the gutter. Her mother. When consumption had finally taken her, Alice Hartley had been the same colour as her bedsheets, despite everything Eleanor had tried. The life had been draining out of her for months, and by the end she wasn’t much more than a husk that rattled as it breathed.

Lizzie hadn’t looked like a husk. She’d looked worse than that. Blotchy, swollen, and—

Eleanor dug her fingernails into her arms as bile rose at the back of her throat. She wasn’t going to think about that.

She’d been put in the drawing room, next to a cooling mug of hot brandy. There were policemen everywhere. Not the gangly constables who stammered if she asked the time. These policemen were quiet, hard-eyed men with hands the size of dinner plates.

The voices of the crowd bounced off the walls and buzzed around her ears. People had pressed up against the garden wall all day, hoping to get a look at the body. Even though Eleanor was on the first floor she kept expecting to see them pressed up against the drawing-room windows, trying to catch a glimpse of her, too.

The door opened. Eleanor flinched.

‘Ella?’ said Mrs Fielding. ‘Ella, dear, the Inspector wants to talk to you.’

He was the tallest man she had ever seen. Even with his hat underneath one arm he had to duck to get through the door. His dark clothes made him look like an undertaker. His black eyes were sunken, and as she got up to greet him Eleanor thought of the black-eyed woman.

‘Detective Inspector George Hatchett,’ he said. ‘I understand you found the body.’

Eleanor nodded.

He gave her an appraising look. ‘Sit down, please. You’ve had quite a shock, I imagine.’

Eleanor sank back into her chair. The Inspector riffled through his notebook. He made a few notes, slowly and carefully, and Eleanor wondered what on Earth he could be writing. She hadn’t even said anything.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s start at the beginning. You are a housemaid here, is that correct?’

She nodded.

‘And you are also Mr Pembroke’s ward?’

She nodded again.

‘And how long have you been living here?’

‘Just over seven years.’ Her voice was a cracked and whispery thing. ‘Working for three.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that so?’

She nodded again. He made a clucking noise with his tongue. It was so out of place that she wanted to laugh – as if a raven had started squawking like a hen – but if she started, she wasn’t sure if she would cry, be sick, or keep laughing and laughing until she sank to her knees, shaking.

It was all her fault, Eleanor thought. She hadn’t realized Lizzie had been so upset after they argued. Eleanor had been so angry, so scared, that she hadn’t spared a thought for Lizzie. To think she’d said all those awful things right after Lizzie’s sweetheart had thrown her over.

‘Tell me what happened earlier this morning. In your own words.’

Lizzie could have been perched on the arm of the Inspector’s chair, leaning against the window pane, or sliding her hands around Eleanor’s throat. Every shadow was as dark as her hair. Every distant creak was her footstep. Whenever the air was stirred, and the tang of polish coiled through the room, it was because Lizzie had closed the door behind her. She half-expected Lizzie to appear behind the Inspector’s chair and point a discoloured, accusing finger right between Eleanor’s eyes.

Eleanor’s dress was still damp. She couldn’t say if it was from Lizzie’s last act of spite or the moment when she’d found her. Either way, it felt like Lizzie’s blood splashed across Eleanor’s skin.

‘Miss Hartley?’

What could she say? What would he want her to say? Would she have to account for everything she’d done, at every minute since she’d woken? Eleanor didn’t think she could. When had she come downstairs? Five? She couldn’t remember hearing the clock. No, it must have been earlier than that. Or later. Perhaps it wasn’t five o’clock at all …

‘Miss Hartley?’

‘Her lips were blue,’ she blurted.

The Inspector blinked at her. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘We tried to pull her out of the water before you came. Mrs … Mrs Fielding said she might not have been there long. But when we turned her over her lips were blue. Is that normal?’

‘It’s not uncommon.’

Eleanor put her head in her hands. ‘She shouldn’t have done it. I knew she was dead the moment I saw her. I never wanted them to turn her over.’

‘You knew? How?’

Certainty had slammed into her the minute she saw the shape in the garden. Lizzie’s hands had been snarled up like withered roots, half-hidden in deep gouges in the soil. She’d known as soon as she saw those frozen fingers.

The Inspector sighed. ‘Have you drunk that brandy, Miss Hartley?’

Eleanor shook